Here's the little Nork gem that caught his attention between the front and back nine. The KN-08. It's a dandy little truck rollaroundable missile that has people in the know asking the question "If they stop blowing them up and figure out their sh#t (and they will figure out their sh#t, see NASA Project Vanguard) just how far can that little sumbitch carry a nuclear warhead?"

Remember how much fun it was back in the day to find SCUDS on trucks in Iraq and blow them up on the ground before they launched? Yeah. Good times man, good times.

What do we actually know? The current leader was carefully chosen with older siblings being passed by as unacceptable. This means that the regime is concerned with it's political survival and continuance in power. Which of course means they are not suicidal. I doubt anyone runs a country by being truly insane. Generals or leaders.

Could they become suicidal if they were to have their system unravel? Perhaps. Suicidal actions would be unlikely even then if history shows us much.

This rules out full scale invasion of the south or the use of their primitive Nukes. Although an open air ocean test might be something they would do.

One would expect them to continue to find creative and outrageous new ways to give the world the finger like they have for decades.

This behavior seems to work well for their internal politics.

Call it Tantrum diplomacy. It has allowed them to gain carrots from the world for toning down from bizarre behavior to merely poor behavior. Although this may no longer be working so well. It also lets them show each other internally how ballsy and loyal they are. It give them the ability to have an outside boogeyman to unite their peasants with. Peasant they deliberately underfeed in order to keep them weak and docile.

Basically N Korea is very predictable. Being outrageous and slightly dangerous is what they do, their MO if you will. You can almost set your clock by it.

It is true. China is blessed with many natural resources, but they have pitiful oil reserves and not much hope to find any.

Chinese geologists are pretty sharp, though. They regularly publish.

As for N Korea, Seoul is so close to the border line that N Korea already has thousands of artillery tubes aimed at each block in the city. All they have to do is say "Fire." and Seoul will be destroyed. They don't need nukes to do this.

If they do do this, even the Chinese won't back them. N Korea will be a smoking hole in the ground.

If you have any doubt that the N Korean man in the street is as batshit crazy as the leader, check out a Netflix documentary about a Doctor who was allowed in to do several hundred quick cateract surgeries. When they pulled off the bandages they were all in tears that they could now see a picture of the "Dear Leader."

Those people are totally brainwashed. If you are found with a radio you die. The N Koreans make Iran look like a boy scout troop.

For that matter, Iran would probably be a great country if they weren't overseen by the clerics. They have a pretty modern society and know what is going on in the rest of the world.

Sooner or later, the N Koreans will do something really horrible. At least with Iran, you can bet on a strategic standoff with their enemies, much like the cold war was. The relationships are already like that, anyway.

The new Sexiest Man on earth doesn't worry me as much as his dad did cause with each generation, like us, they're becoming increasingly co-opted by soft living and materialism. Hedonists are not willing to risk their necks for some dated dogma.

Besides, all this posturing is simply a way to pry concessions from us. The one thing is that if we back them too far into the corner the crazy bastards might feel like they've nothing to lose. Rather a lot like our crazy loser school shooters.

No one seems to consider that it may work the other way round in spades.

If u watched that link I posted up thread TGT you will realize how very right you are. It is far beyond anything the sheltered Americans have to deal with. These people know absolutely nothing except what they are told from birth. Independent learning/thinking is impossible there, really quite fascinating in this day & age how such a small geographic area has maintained it's, uhhhh, ahem, dare I say for lack of a better term- "business plan". Obviously terrifying as well.

...Just, your... Fox news views of Iran, are surprising for an oil guy.

Most of the money guys in the business like Fox News, but I can assure you that I do NOT other than to see how ridiculous they are now and then. It isn't news. I have one friend who is a Republican. I forgive him.

My views of Iran are that, unlike N Korea, where the populace is as insane as their leaders, Iranians are not immune to the world, as seen in the uprising in 2009 when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was falsely re-elected. That uprising and the protests were put down with violence against the people. So the populace isn't as insane as the clerics.

Iran was actually a democracy until the Brits talked us into joining them in staging a coup which placed the brutal Shah in power. Yep. He was democratically elected and we replaced him with an evil Monarchy. Not the first time this stuff has bit us in the ass.

My guess is that Israel will toss the first nuke, or at the least airstrikes designed to take out their nuclear facilities, the main one of which is underground because Israel did the same thing to Syria long ago.

Iran is crazy because they have a religious non-secular supreme leadership and a corruptly placed President, who regularly makes inflaming remarks.

They don't measure up to the Israeli military or their nuclear arsenal. Any nuclear attack on Israel would more or less remove Iran from the face of the Earth.

Now what part of that is in line with Fox News or the right wing nutjobs who work there? Hell, the Christians freaking love Israel.

There are some crazy minded Jews in Israel, and the U.S. has paid a high price in the Middle East for supporting them unconditionally and covering their asses in the U.N. Security Council.

Now tell me what part of that I snitched from Fox News or the Koch Brothers or Glen Beck, who people in this country actually listen to.

I was wondering if it was a correct translation or not as well. It is easy to get hoodwinked on that stuff. I should send it to a friend of mine whose wife is from S Korea. He was in the Air Force over there for a while.

Only Americans are stupid enough to go broke with any kind of foreign invasion or expansion drive. North Korea has no actual money and the idea that they would conduct an ongoing war/invasion is hilarious. Maybe lob a few nukes here or there but no actual war campaign is going to happen by any of these countries. There's too much to lose, and it's political suicide to whomever suggests it these days. I was told we were basically done policing the world as of Afghanistan, which by any definition has been a total bust. So this talk of war by other countries is just talk.

The problem as I see it now John, is that a battle may be out of our hands this go round. We may be stuck with it, nay, drug into it against our will. South Koreas new President Park Geun-hye, has announced that she would retaliate in full if the North pulls any of their standard hijinks. Given that the N seems unable to change it's game plan which involves acting out like a child except people get killed....2 soldiers last year and over 20 injured by over 200 N Korean rounds when they shelled the island. The previous N Korea torpedo hijinks hit at least 1 S. Korea navy vessel, killing 46 S. Korean sailors. I see the sequence as:

1) Hijinks from NK
2) Significant response from SK (this has been mostly absent or very minimal in all of the former N.K hijinks),
3) US is automatically in when #2 occurs and N. Korea goes bat sh#t crazy in response to the S. Korean response.

We won't start it John, unless you consider an absence of discourse the cause. As far as an "invasion" goes. The vast quantity of various sized missiles poised to fly both ways would seem to indicate that there would be huge destruction on both sides before anyone actually crosses into the others territory.

"Only Americans are stupid enough to go broke with any kind of foreign invasion or expansion drive. North Korea has no actual money and the idea that they would conduct an ongoing war/invasion is hilarious. Maybe lob a few nukes here or there but no actual war campaign is going to happen by any of these countries. There's too much to lose, and it's political suicide to whomever suggests it these days. I was told we were basically done policing the world as of Afghanistan, which by any definition has been a total bust. So this talk of war by other countries is just talk.

Oh yes, the huge threat of communism that I have heard about all my life. As the Chinese set back and watch us self destruct, they have to be laughing at it all, how truely easy it is for them to take the wheel because of our greed, corruption, stupidity, and lack of unity as a country.

3) US is automatically in when #2 occurs and N. Korea goes bat sh#t crazy in response to the S. Korean response.
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What I've been told by politicians and people who follow this stuff a lot is that there is basically a total hands-off policy per getting drawn in to other people's wars no matter how grave the circumstances. There really and truly is NO MONEY to campaign like we used to, and nobody in Congress or the Senate wants to promote participation in a war after the debacle in Iraq and the missing WMDs. It was our business when we had cash. Now it's gone. And again, history shows us VERY clearly that third world countries in today's world only fight civil wars. Incursions into other countries - like North Korea invading the South, are totally beyond the capacity of the North to pull off and sustain. they totally lack the organizational skills to pull any such thing off. People don't realize that war making as we have always known it basically died in Iraq. It is the most dastardly and unpopular thing going on the in the world today, and people have economic concerns on their minds these days. The North is just blowing smoke because they are desperate. In he most extreme case they might lob something at the south, but an incursion is totally out of the question. That takes a massive amount of petrol and foodstuffs that the North does not have.

Again, three are not my opinions but come from writer friends who cover war issues. Maybe they're wrong. We have always liked to flex our military muscles but inserting ground forces into a foreign land has suddenly become a non starter. I think a lot of people have yet to adjust to the idea that the US is done policing the world. At least for the moment. Bush was so profligate with the cash box that "war machine" is the portal to national disaster.

Man, this is so true. The NSA used to do everything in house and there were no outside contractors. Now they have a thousand contractors selling them stuff. If you drive the interstate through Laurel, MD, where the NSA is located, you will see giant buildings of the usual suspects: Lockheed, Boeing, etc. Those contractor complexes are so huge that they have their own exits, and those exits come right to a security stop and gate.

If we want peace, and save a lot of money to boot, we need to recognize this. The problem is that the defense contractors, like all businesses whose main revenue comes from the U.S. Treasury have lobbyists who will portray a legislator as soft on national security.

The Financial Industry is much the same. The banking crisis was caused directly because Clinton ended the Glass-Steagal act, which controlled where a bank could invest its money and how much cash it had to keep in capital reserves.

Despite the crash, nobody has reintroduced the Glass Steagall act. Why? Tons of pressure from the financial industry.

It is out of control. The voter doesn't know the details of how things happen in Washington, and most don't even care. That's why we live on a steady diet of soundbytes and analysis based on poor and biased opinions.

Look at Fox News. Obama can't blink without him getting reamed. Hell, if he DIDN'T blink they would criticize him just as much. We are all carp with hooks in our mouths.

One of my greatest beefs is that we guzzle so much oil in this country that we even NEED to put Nimitz class aircraft carriers in the middle east to flex our muscles.

We actually import only a small amount of oil from the middle east. We get almost all of our oil from Canada, Mexico, and the Atlantic Basin countries such as Brazil, Venezueala, Nigeria, etc.

So why care about the middle east?

Oil is traded on a national market, and if the straights get permanently blocked, bringing about a quarter or a third of the world's supply to a stop, then oil anywhere will be sought by everyone, and the price would probably triple.

That wouldn't be such a big deal if you disregard other economic factors. Gas would be so expensive that people would finally be forced to use less. I scream from the rooftops that our oil addiction would be less of a problem if we cut our consumption by a third. Jimmy Carter actually accomplished this for a couple of years.

Dude. Go to the Energy Information Agency website. They are like the CIA of energy statistics and is considered the gold standard for the industry all over the world. They don't change a thing when parties change, because statistics are just statistics.

It is a fantastic website, and you guys should surf through some of the beginner's articles on oil markets and such.

You will then understand that all of the major oil companies control a microscopic part of the world's oil supply. The nationalized exporting countries are where the real muscle is.

Exxon is a chain of gas stations compared to Irag, Iran, Venezuala, any of them. The power lies in the hands of those nations on one end, and on the gullet of the American consumer on the other end.

We just waste the stuff and are fast approaching a very bad position: Oil prices will climb, and we won't be ready for it.

As for N Korea, Wiki has a great page on them, their economy, their politics, you name it.

We defend Japan and S Korea by treaty. So those are two other countries who we pay to defend.

You are correct about China, but think like this: China has very little oil but tons of coal. They actually own production in the United States. At my last job, they would take our work and the acreage blocks and open a data room to find joint venture partners. I never got to go down there, but I would get an email telling me to get this and that ready because say, the French were in town with Total, the Norwegians were in town with Statoil, and the Chinese were in town with CNOOC. You can bet your ass that they have their eyes on all of the China and Yellow Sea deposits. Those are known producing areas that haven't been fully explored yet.

Hell, the Falklands is important to the Brits (and Argentina) because there are some sweet looking sedimentary basins offshore.

No sh#t. Although they aren't the operating company, many of the shale plays are partly owned by foreign companies, even the Chinese. I heard that the Chinese picked up some stuff from Chesapeake, where I just finished my last contract. Just in time to see it go down in flames. Sort of.

Hey, keep it on point boys, this is about N Korea, not China. But it does bring up an interesting point as to why China has been propping up N Korea all these years. It does look like that may be a thing of the past; most families get tired of making excuses for their 'black sheep'.

I watch NHK News often and they had a hilarious bit on how N Korea Tourism announced that foreign touroids can now use their cell phones when they visit the Inner Sanctum. However, the NHK reporter couldn't get a signal in Pyongyang.

I don't think that anyone but the most primitive people will ever use nukes again.

I think that the wars of the future will be economic ones. The Soviet Union collapsed due to economics, although Reagan likes to take credit.

It is still a valid question. If Iran gets nuked, will Israel use the pre-emptive war that Bush made valid during the Iraq war? Will Pakistan and India go at it, even if it is an accident?

Will N Korea, in an act of economic deperation, toss a nuke at Japan?

We can park a trident missile sub and have it sit on the bottom 100 miles off the coast of N Korea, but why?

We have this incredible military, but what is it good for? I will say that defense contractors love war. I remember the fight when they tried to close an F-16 plant in Ft. Worth. The local congressmen and Senators twisted the arms of the Defense Appropriation Committees and kept their plant, even though the Air Force didn't want it.

We are also usually #1 or #2 in the world when it comes to military exports.

A large chunk of the budget goes to military spending. If you cut off the teat, there are going to be a lot of people out of work and screaming at politicians.

While we're all watching N. Korea and Iran, nobody seems to pay attention to that Northern border between India and Pakistan. Both of those countries have nukes, and that border dispute goes back a long time, and there has been lots of sabre rattling.

I would not be surprised if the first tactical nuke to be detonated is between those two.

Speaking of little rat bastards, I hear that Musharef is back in Pakistan, another in a long line of military dictators that were supported by the US of A. Don't think he'll last long, he has numerous contracts out on his ass.

I am not too worried about Lil’ Kim. I’m sure his cousins to the south have his military, political, intelligence (ha!), and economic (haha!) services well penetrated. When his capabilities begin to approach the level of his threats, or if he decides to pull the triggers on his artillery aimed at Seoul, it will be known beforehand in the South and he will be history. South Korea understands self preservation.

The time to worry about Kim is when/if he decides to make nice publicly as a cover for an attack. If he starts yapping about peaceful coexistence or reunification with the South and makes a few ‘concessions’ on his nukes, human rights, trade, families split by the 38th, etc., he might be able to cause confusion in the governments of his opponents. Hitler was the master of the peace conference as a prelude to war. Is Kim that savvy?

A long time ago, I read a story about N Korea's thousands of artillery tubes already sighted in on each block of Seoul. Just give the order, bang, and ten minutes later Seoul is a smoking hole in the ground.

N Korea has the 4th largest army in the world. It would get really nasty really quick.

I've heard a lot of crazy talk coming out of N Korea in the past, but this is over the top crazy.

Nuclear Weapons aren't really the point. They have a massive army maintained on the border and our forces are much smaller.

If they dared to attack Japan, sh#t would really fly.

You can be sure that we won't use nukes even if they do. Anyone who uses nukes will be a pariah. Nukes give you the comfort of not being invaded. You can't actually use them.

similar to Saddam, NK has a very rigid heirarchical structure to their military. Do something not ordered, and you are beheaded.

So....you wait for the order, before doing anything.

What happens if communications is disrupted? Surely, Kim is not going to travel to each battery to give orders?

This involves technology, which can be disrupted and corrupted, as the Iranians can tell you.

I'm not an expert on this, but I figured this out. Do you really think we have not mapped all their communication sites? Do you think we have not worked out their methods for alternative communications?

N Korea has the 4th largest army in the world. It would get really nasty really quick.

Sadam had the 5th largest before GW1 and either the 3rd or 4th largest relatively modern armored force.

Fat lot of good it did him.

The Norkor army is technologically essentially the same as it was in the 50's with minor improvements around the edges and of course the addition of a few nukes.

The whole country, including the military is malnourished.

They have one bloody, suicidal week, providing a target rich environment,
then the food and ammo run out.

All those tubes pointed at 20 million civilians presents another problem.
S Korea isn't going to give them a chance to use them if at all possible.
That exponentially increases the likelihood of miscalculation by Kimmie inducing a hair trigger response from the south.

Then you have the third generation effect.

The third generation of a dynasty, be it political, corporate or a family business, all seem to all have a penchant for an absolutely disastrous decision making processes.

Like they didn't watch CNN during the Gulf Wars? They know they'll be
wiped out. The guys in the funny hats live a good life, why would they
want to end that? You have to view these clowns as you would any gang in
LA - they're just talking smack because that's what they do and Rodney Dangerfield
is their inspiration.

nobody seems to pay attention to that Northern border between India and Pakistan

YDP18s

Not necessarily true. Back in 1995, working towards my master at Cal State Hayward/EastBay, the professor of the International Communications course asked the class (about 30) to divide into groups and pick a 'hot topic'.

To digress, I have to add that many in the class could not even point to most countries on a map, (including the three Swedes in the class). And these were senior undergrads or post-grads.

Knowing that I was journalist for seven years in Britain and that I had worked in Ireland, the group that picked Northern Ireland's Troubles asked me to join.

I picked Kashmir as a potential hot spot, given the past conflicts and both India and Pakistan have the bomb. I was the only one in my 'group', the others broke into several groups that had more, shall we say, media attention for their hot spots.

Do I/we really have to live in a country in conflict or on the edge to understand the inherent dangers? Skully, I bow to your experience of living in a country I have never been to, but please don't insult those of us who have, at length, studied and followed the situation.

Anyway first hand experience is one thing, but don't knock looking in from the outside.

While their missiles at most could threaten Japan with a conventional explosive warhead they cannot touch even Alaska reliably.

There are things NK could do that would be terrible. However all those terrible things would end up MUCH worse for them. Thus they are limited to whatever creative annoyances they can come up with that won't quite get themselves killed by us or SK. Things like sinking ships.. small barrages on mostly unihabited lands. Nuke tests..or whatever other small thing they can come up with perhaps unanticipated.

Skully, I was there from 74 to 76, in the Army working as an air traffic controller. I know that's back in the dark ages, but we all took the threat very seriously. We went on high alert many times, one particularly when a US soldier was killed by a North Korean guard at the DMZ.

I don't think most people realize just how many troops they have so close to Seoul. The Oijongbu corridor is a big flat valley leading straight to Seoul, that the N. Korean hordes would charge South through. When we were there, the estimates of US and S. Korean casualties in the first 48 hrs was upwards of 40%, for the troops stationed near the border. That huge mass of N. Korean troops is only 30 to 40 miles from Seoul, like having dozens of battalions in Boulder, aimed at Denver.

As for the starving soldiers not being able to fight, ever heard of Chairman Mao's army, the Russian revolution, Cuba, French revolution? Hungry people fight like.....well, like they've got nothing to lose, and they don't. I'm sure we would win out in the end, but there'd be too many lost on both sides. Ugh!, sometimes I hate humans!

Donald Gregg was US Ambassador to S Korea and CIA station chief.
Don't ya hate to read stuff by somebody who knows what fer?

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Reaching out to North Korea

Obama showed on his Middle East trip to power of direct presidential involvement. He should employ that same sort of diplomacy toward Pyongyang.

By Donald Gregg
April 1, 2013

President Obama's recent Middle East trip showed what good things can result from thoughtful, direct presidential involvement. The president addressed young Israelis, reassured allies in the region and brokered an Israeli apology to Turkey for a deadly raid on a flotilla attempting to take supplies to Gaza.

The president should employ that same sort of diplomacy toward North Korea.

An increasingly dangerous confrontation is building between the United States and North Korea. The outrageous rhetoric pouring out of Pyongyang makes it difficult to do anything more than dismiss North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un. But abandoning diplomacy would be extremely dangerous. The North Koreans are convinced that nuclear weapons are the only thing keeping them safe from a U.S. attack, and recent flights of nuclear-capable U.S. warplanes over the Korean peninsula only hardened that conviction.

As distasteful as it may seem, we need to talk directly with the North Koreans. They will not give up their nuclear weapons at this juncture, and for the United States to demand that they do so as a precondition for talks will only lead to greater tension, including the possibility of a military explosion. Would it not be better to negotiate a peace treaty?

The George W. Bush administration took the position that engagement with Pyongyang would reward bad behavior, and that seems to be the approach of the Obama administration too. But though the North Koreans often sound like belligerent lunatics, there are certainly many reasons to engage, particularly on a peace treaty, an idea Kim Jong Un might well embrace.

I have been dealing with Korean issues for 40 years, since I arrived as the CIA's chief of station in Seoul. Later, from 1989 to 1993, I served as ambassador to South Korea. And time and again I saw diplomacy work where confrontation would have failed.

In August 1973, U.S. Ambassador Philip Habib learned that opposition leader Kim Dae-jung had been kidnapped in Tokyo and was on a small boat about to be thrown into the sea. It was widely assumed (and later confirmed) that South Korea's intelligence service, the KCIA, was responsible. But Habib did not jump into his sedan and confront autocratic President Park Chung-hee with an accusation. Habib first wrote Park a letter, giving him time to construct a response that kept Kim alive and enabled Park to deflect responsibility for the kidnapping.

In December 1980, I witnessed close up a confrontation that failed. Kim Dae-jung had, at that point, been sentenced to death on trumped-up charges of treason. Outgoing President Jimmy Carter sent Defense Secretary Harold Brown and me to Seoul to confront South Korea's president, Chun Doo-hwan, on the matter. Our instructions were to tell him, essentially, to release Kim "or else."

This approach failed utterly, and Kim was on the verge of execution. The incoming Reagan administration, led by Richard V. Allen, was astute enough to offer Chun a visit to the White House to keep Kim alive. In order to see Reagan, Chun released Kim, who went on to become South Korea's president and receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Granted, these experiences were in South Korea, a place very different from its northern neighbor. But diplomacy works around the world. We can't simply order Kim Jong Un to abandon his nuclear ambitions. Dialogue is needed, and Obama should reach out to those who have negotiated successfully with North Korea to help craft an approach.

Next month, South Korean President Park Geun-hye will visit Washington to meet with Obama. I was in Seoul in 1974 when a North Korean agent trying to kill her father, President Park Chung-hee, fired and missed, killing her mother instead. Still, Park Geun-hye visited Pyongyang in 2001 and met with then-President Kim Jong Il. When I congratulated her for doing so, her response was: "We must look to the future with hope, not to the past with bitterness."

Park calls her policy toward North Korea "trustpolitik," and she would undoubtedly be pleased to find thinking compatible with that policy in the White House, as would China's new president, Xi Jinping, who has already called Park, offering to help ease tension between the two Koreas.

The alternative to diplomacy is escalating conflict, and that would be a terrible mistake on the Korean peninsula. Negotiating a lasting peace is the only sensible approach.

Donald Gregg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993, was CIA station chief in that country from 1973 to 1975. He served as national security advisor to Vice President George H.W. Bush from 1982 to 1988.

Ron nice photo but he is looking the wrong way, he should be looking up.

Credit: lostinshanghai

That's going to be the biggest surprise: That X-37B[3]newly secretive unmanned aircraft that stays in orbit above the target for 270 days can get down to 110 miles in orbit just above and deliver "Rods [Tungsten] from God" that will wake him up. But he will not be waking up here on Earth.

It is highly improbable that the missile attack plan was something slapped together last month. Odds are good the cities are genuine, calculated targets. Honolulu makes immediate sense. The North's missiles can already hit it, and it is President Barack Obama's hometown.

Los Angeles is a huge target area, ideal for missiles of questionable accuracy. Though not yet within range, it could be shortly. LA has millions of residents plus the icon targets of Hollywood and Disneyland. Washington is a no-brainer. North Korea can't hit the city, but threatening it puts nuclear bull's-eyes on U.S. leaders and America's capital. It's a personal and public tit for tat.

But why Austin?

The literal answer, and literal target, is South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.'s Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS) manufacturing facility, located on Austin's north side. However, pinpointing the hometown of this facility is agitprop excess, for it tells us that the North Korean regime is aware of its own immense and tragic failure. Moreover, the thugs are ashamed.

North Korea's real target, which the literal target represents, is South Korea's demonstrable success. Samsung and a hundred other South Korean enterprises with global reputations and reach demonstrate South Korea economic power and organizational strength. North Korea, a Communist Workers' Paradise, is a starving prison state, and its leaders are profoundly embarrassed.

Imagine the North Koreans invading the South. Once they secured the area, what would they do, and who would do it? They have no infrastructure or leadership to do anything but ask for food. How would they sustain an invasion? Do they rally think the rest of the world would let them keep the south? We will never see a north and south conflict.

I reckon an assassination / coup is much more likely than any invasion. The generals are probably the only people in the country that get three squares a day-- why would they want to face certain destruction?

Any Chinese military build up near the NK border is for refugee control in case things go South (couldn’t resist). China has its own huge issues – a financial house of cards, aging population, systemic corruption, etc. China has about as much use for Lil’ Kim as Austin, TX does.

Well, that is small comfort to the 15 million S Koreans who live within range
of the NK artillery. They could do a lot of damage. As I said a few pages
back I tend to agree with the sabre rattling but one never knows with
bonafide wackjobs. I think a lot of it has to do with saving face which is
why continued negotiations are important, at least as far as those 15 million
S Koreans are concerned.

Agreed, Largo. It's for local consumption. The situation is similar to that of a few months ago when, while installing the new Emperor, China got all belligerent with Japan over the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. That sure went from end-of-the-world to off-of-the-front-pages in a hurry.

I also agree with you. It can’t be easy to live under the barrels of half a million tubes. But I believe that SK has the means to take out Lil’ Kim at will. They must. If SK really felt that Kim was going to go for it, he and his buddies would be dead before they got within sight of the fuses much less before getting their Bics out of their pockets to light them up. SK and NK share common language, history, traditions, families, you name it. SK can take Kim and his artillery out at will. Why haven’t they done that already? Because NK’s noise has always been greater than its abilities. SK won’t waste its cousins until Kim steps over a certain line. As long as NK just barks, China prevents taking the Kim Dynasty out. If NK goes Rambo, China will step away from NK and join the world coalition for ‘stability in the region.’

SK doesn’t seem particularly worried. Check out the one year trend in the KRX index (SK stock market).

SK has been living under the threat of NK’s guns for over 60 years. They have given some thought to this kind of mess and have a solution.

Credit: Gene

But, of course, I haven't considered NK's ability to make itself invisible.

Right now, the average N. Korean thinks that we are the aggressors, pushing them to go to war. These people are completely brainwashed from birth, and too downtrodden to know any different. They believe what "Dear Leader" says, and that's that. Right now a good portion of the population is starving, so getting fed is probably all they care about.

I read a story once that a doctor was allowed to perform some eye surgeries in the North. Many of his elder patients burst into tears after recovery - not because they could see again, but because they could gaze upon a photo of the "Dear Leader". You talk about the sheeple in the US - they don't hold a candle to N. Korea.

I'm especially getting a laugh at how the news is trying to convince us that they can strike the US mainland. I saw one graphic that had these big circles emanating from Korea, one of which touched on the Western US. When you opened it, it showed the range of all the missiles they own - that big ring touching the US was totally empty. The fact is, the missiles that they do have could barely reach Hawaii - and that only by a long shot. They are trying to build an ICBM, but so far their success rate is in the toilet with all of their longer-range rockets.

The very real danger is to our military installations in Asia, all of which are in range of their reliable missile systems. I think that all it's going to take is one slight mis step by the US in the current war exercise, and Dear Leader will use that as an excuse to push the button. And yeah, I think he's stupid enough to do so. Any nuclear action would then make Japan and several other countries immediately pursue a nuclear arms program to defend themselves.

If it remains only N. Korea in a conflict, they would be wiped out, but we would lose thousands, and potentially tens of thousands, of US nationals and allies. If the Chinese decide to support Dear Leader, then all bets are off.

If it remains only N. Korea in a conflict, they would be wiped out, but we would lose thousands, and potentially tens of thousands, of US nationals and allies. If the Chinese decide to support Dear Leader, then all bets are off.
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There's no way in hell ANYONE is committing 10s of 1000s of American soldiers to subdue North Korea. That would never get past congress. We'd be bankrupt once again. It's an Asian problem, basically. Though terribly passive aggressive, China will have to make a mover here sometime if Our Leader stops watching porn long enough to launch a nuke.

I agree with you totally, John. I should have clarified that to mean we would lose thousands if Dear Leader pushes the little red button at something like Okinawa or any of our other large installations within reach.

I'm really hoping this cools off, I have friends in this nutjob's crosshairs.

I live in Okinawa and nobody's worried. We've got Patriot missiles and one of the world's biggest air bases protecting us. Most of us here think this is all part of an internal power struggle in North Korea. What better way to rally your people and lock up your detractors than to stir up fears of war? Unfortunately we know so little about North Korea, we're not sure who might be backing or trying to get rid of dear leader.

As for committing troops, that is debatable. We already have tens of thousands of our military stationed in South Korea and if large numbers were killed in a North Korean attack, we would have to respond. Hopefully we're smart enough not to get involved in another land war in Asia or go north of the Yalu River this time. If anyone uses nukes, it's most likely to be us, for the same reason as WWII - to save American lives.

The Chinese will protest but won't do anything. The Korean War set their development back a whole generation and South Korea is a profitable trading partner whereas North Korea is an economic drain and source of refugees.

What better way to rally your people and lock up your detractors than to stir up fears of war? Unfortunately we know so little about North Korea, we're not sure who might be backing or trying to get rid of dear leader.

There may be no way we are sending 10's of 1000's of troops in to subdue N. Korea, but the fact remains that we currently have 28,500 troops stationed there and a large percentage are within artillery range of the N. Korean guns on the DMZ. Sure, we'd kick their butts if we need to, but we could lose quite a few troops even if we respond immediately to an attack.

The North Korean military is roughly the same size as the pre-war Iraqi military. Of course Iraq gave us about six months to prepare and get into position and let us set the time frame to when we were ready to go and there was initially hundreds of miles of desert between us and them. And 2/3 of the Iraqi troops were conscripts that really didn't want to be there.

If we go to war I wonder if North Korea will produce any entertaining characters like this guy.

There ain't gonna be no conflict. It's all wanking. Asians are locked won. Any attack would never be declared. How do you honestly think the North Koreans would mount any attack at all? With what gas? It takes millions of gallons. And what food? It's silly to take any of this seriously, though yo have to with a nut in office and so many Americans nearby. It is true we have 28 K troops there? Seems crazy excessive. And super costly.

They will get hundreds of thousands of shots off from heavy artillery.

The barrage will last for hours, if not days.

Those shots will hit US positions and densely-populated areas of Seoul.

We will take out all their guns, eventually...

Dave... you should study up on our Counter Artillery capabilities.

We can get off a shot, while their shell is still on the way, with pin point accuracy. We don't just shoot at rough grid points like the NK can. We shoot at the TUBE itself.

We can tell where the shot is coming from, at the same time we have shells that can fly around and give intell .... thanks to a climber I know who designed and tested those suckers, for the second wave of directed shots.

All the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ we have spent does give us quite a large edge when it comes to combat.

Just watch some of the vids comming out of Afgan....

And I agree with JL..... they don't have the resources for more than a few seconds of WAR.

Fidel Castro advises friend North Korea against war
12:02pm EDTNorth Korea asks embassies to consider moving diplomats out|
By Jeff Franks
HAVANA | Fri Apr 5, 2013 12:02pm EDT
(Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro warned ally North Korea against war on Friday and described the current tensions on the Korean Peninsula as one of the "gravest risks" for nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Credit: jstan

Saying he spoke as a friend, Castro wrote in Cuban state media that North Korea, led by 30-year-old Kim Jong-un, had shown the world its technical prowess and now it was time to remember its duties to others.

North Korea, which along with Cuba is one of the world's last communist countries, has been ratcheting up pressure by declaring war on neighbor South Korea and threatening to stage a nuclear strike on the United States.

Few observers believe it will actually attack anyone, but Castro has become an anti-nuclear advocate in recent years.

"The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was always friendly with Cuba, as Cuba always has been and will continue to be with her," Castro wrote, using an almost paternalistic tone.

"Now that it has demonstrated its technical and scientific advances, we remind it of its duties to other countries who have been great friends and that it would not be just to forget that such a war would affect in a special way more than 70 percent of the world's population," said the 86-year-old, who turned Cuba communist after taking power in a 1959 revolution.

Castro called the present situation on the Korean Peninsula "incredible and absurd," but said "it has to do with one of the gravest risks of nuclear war since the Crisis of October (Cuban Missile Crisis), 50 years ago."

He led Cuba through the October 1962 showdown when the United States and Soviet Union nearly went to war over the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba, 90 miles south of Florida.

At one point, Castro wrote a letter to Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev urging a nuclear attack on the United States, which he assumed was about to invade the Caribbean island.

Cooler heads prevailed as Khruschev and President John F. Kennedy reached an agreement in which the Soviet missiles were removed and the United States promised never to invade Cuba.

Castro ruled Cuba for 49 years before age and ill health forced him to step down in 2008.

He was succeeded as president by younger brother Raul Castro, 81, but remains a power behind the scenes and writes occasional columns for Cuban press.

The elder Castro also said the United States had the responsibility to prevent war, which he said if unleashed would make President Barack Obama look like "the most sinister person in the history of the United States."

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Thanks only to NK's posture over many years, I think Castro's assessment of the risk is plausible. And due to the corruption of people's minds carried out in NK since the 50's, improvement in the near term is made unlikely.

Werner gets my vote for best post on this subject and american's in general.

Somehow I missed it, normally his comments are the best. The situation is very simple. The North Koreans feel threatened and that their nukes are what's keeping them from ending up like Iraq, Libya, etc. Nothing crazy about it. They would be crazy to disarm. The Chinese are massing troops in the NK border, to defend NK as they are obligated to do by treaty.

One of the reasons the grandson of the dynasty feels free to make threats is because his father and grandfather did, and in return they got food and fuel aid. Personally I think the only way to end this blackmail is to not give in again.

The grandson has backed himself into quite a corner through his inexperience and I think we may well see a military coup against him as a result of this.

The periodical sums up my opinion if we did go to war with Korea. I said if and think most likely we will not.

Credit: lostinshanghai

You have to realize this is a kid so he has been listening to and learning from the generals of his army, navy, Air Farce? who are the ones in command; the old guard that wants the war. He is in a dilemma of acting tough to the rest of the world and his people thinking that NATO especially the US will make a deal and feed the country get the sanctions off his back which no one will offer. No loosing Face as they say in that part of the world.

China will not get involved, the only way if they do is give him and his family sanctuary as well as the generals that want to live.

That's assuming if he does attack, no nukes but hits the US air base in Japan first [but the planes will be in the air well before it gets hit then the US has the right to act by striking back. No nukes as well. The kid who has no clue since he is too young to comprehend what the US will do. Well he does just like what we did in Libya, and other countries in the Middle East by hitting the command centers so they would have no way to communicate with generals in the field, knock out their electricity as well, As it goes for his superior weaponry he is on the wrong track. No match.

Good write [one opinion] on FOREIGNAFFAIRS this week:

The Next Korean War:

Conflict With North Korea Could Go Nuclear -- But Washington Can Reduce the Risk

Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press

As North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un issues increasingly over-the-top threats -- including intimations that he might launch nuclear strikes against the United States -- officials in Washington have sought to reassure the public and U.S. allies. North Korea, they say, may initiate cyberattacks or other limited provocations, but the leaders in Pyongyang wish to survive, so they are highly unlikely to do anything as foolhardy as using nuclear weapons.

Despite those assurances, however, the risk of nuclear war with North Korea is far from remote. Although Pyongyang’s tired threats are probably bluster, the current crisis has substantially increased the risk of a conventional conflict -- and any conventional war with North Korea is likely to go nuclear. Washington should continue its efforts to prevent war on the Korean Peninsula. But equally important, it must rapidly take steps -- including re-evaluating U.S. war plans -- to dampen the risks of nuclear escalation if conventional war erupts.

Ironically, the risk of North Korean nuclear war stems not from weakness on the part of the United States and South Korea but from their strength. If war erupted, the North Korean army, short on training and armed with decrepit equipment, would prove no match for the U.S.–South Korean Combined Forces Command. Make no mistake, Seoul would suffer some damage, but a conventional war would be a rout, and CFC forces would quickly cross the border and head north.

At that point, North Korea’s inner circle would face a grave decision: how to avoid the terrible fates of such defeated leaders as Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Qaddafi. Kim, his family, and his cronies could try to escape to China and plead for a comfortable, lifelong sanctuary there -- an increasingly dim prospect given Beijing’s growing frustration with Kim’s regime. Pyongyang’s only other option would be to try to force a cease-fire by playing its only trump card: nuclear escalation.

It’s impossible to know how exactly Kim might employ his nuclear arsenal to stop the CFC from marching to Pyongyang. But the effectiveness of his strategy would not depend on what North Korea initially destroyed, such as a South Korean port or a U.S. airbase in Japan. The key to coercion is the hostage that is still alive: half a dozen South Korean or Japanese cities, which Kim could threaten to attack unless the CFC accepted a cease-fire.

This strategy, planning to use nuclear escalation to stalemate a militarily superior foe, is not far-fetched. In fact, it was NATO’s strategy for most of the Cold War. Back then, when the alliance felt outgunned by the massive conventional forces of the Warsaw Pact, NATO planned to use nuclear weapons coercively to thwart a major conventional attack. Today, both Pakistan and Russia rely on that same strategy to deal with the overwhelming conventional threats that they face. Experts too easily dismiss the notion that North Korea’s rulers might deliberately escalate a conventional conflict, but if their choice is between escalation and a noose, it is unclear why they would be less ruthless than those who once devised plans to defend NATO.

Even if the United States and South Korea anticipated the danger of marching to Pyongyang and adopted limited objectives in a war, nuclear escalation would still be likely. That’s because the style of conventional war that the United States has mastered over the past two decades is highly escalatory.

The core of U.S. conventional military strategy, refined during recent wars, is to incapacitate the enemy by disabling its central nervous system -- its ability to understand what is happening on the battlefield, make decisions, and control its forces. Against Serbia, Libya, and Iraq (twice), the key targets in the first days of conflict were not enemy tanks, ships, or planes but leadership bunkers, military command sites, and means of communication. This new American way of war has been enormously effective. But if directed against a nuclear-armed opponent, it would pressure the enemy to escalate a conflict.

Preventing escalation in the midst of a war would require convincing North Korea’s leaders that they would survive, and so attacks designed to isolate and blind the regime would be counterproductive. Once airstrikes began pummeling leadership bunkers and severing communication links, the Kim regime would have no way of discerning how minimalist or maximalist the CFC’s objectives were. It would face powerful incentives to make the CFC attacks stop immediately -- a job for which nuclear weapons are well suited.

The sliver of good news is that North Korea may not yet have the capabilities to carry out this strategy. It may not be able to tip its ballistic missiles with a nuclear payload, and its other means of delivering nuclear weapons remain limited. Given the rate of progress, however, if the regime does not have these capabilities today, it will soon.

What can be done? First, Washington and Seoul must make every effort to avoid war in the current crisis. The United States is undoubtedly (and appropriately) quietly reinforcing U.S. forces in the region, and the CFC is understandably considering what red lines might trigger a pre-emptive conventional strike. But the fact that war with North Korea probably means nuclear war should temper any consideration of limited pre-emptive strikes. Pre-emption means war, and war means nuclear.

Second, U.S. and South Korean planners need to develop truly limited conventional military options for the Peninsula -- limited not merely in their objectives but also in terms of the military operations they unleash. Perhaps the greatest danger of all is if the U.S. president and the South Korean president incorrectly believe that they have limited military options available; they and their senior advisers may not fully appreciate that those supposedly limited options in fact entail hundreds of airstrikes against high-value targets, such as leadership, command-and-control systems, and perhaps even against nuclear-weapons sites.

Third, American and South Korean leaders should urge China to develop “golden parachute” plans for the North Korean leadership and their families. Leaders in Pyongyang will keep their nuclear weapons holstered during a war only if they believe that they and their families have a safe and secure future somewhere. In the past, China has been understandably reluctant to hold official talks with the United States about facilitating the demise of its ally. But the prospect of nuclear war next door could induce Beijing to take more direct steps, including preparing an escape plan now and revealing it to Kim as soon as a first shot is fired.

More broadly, the strategic dilemma Washington faces today extends beyond the current standoff with North Korea: how to run a network of global alliances when nuclear weapons allow enemies to nullify the United States’ superior military might. American officials used to extol the ability of nuclear weapons to stalemate powerful enemies. Now the shoe is on the other foot. There is every reason to believe that North Korea has adopted NATO’s old strategy. As the current standoff is making frighteningly clear, deterring escalation, especially during conventional wars, is not last century’s concern; it may be the single toughest strategic problem confronting the United States for decades to come.

Another good read: from CFR [Council of Foreign Affairs]

North Korea's Rhetorical Flurry

Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

Interviewee: Scott A. Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy

Pyongyang has increased its combative rhetoric in recent days, including threats of preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and South Korea. Meanwhile, Washington has flexed its military deterrent in the region, with rare stealth bomber sorties and other exercises in South Korea. "The primary danger is really related to the potential for miscalculation between the two sides," says CFR's Korea expert Scott A. Snyder. "And in this kind of atmosphere of tensions, that miscalculation could have deadly consequences." Despite the sabre rattling, Snyder says he is not so concerned about the public threats as much as he is about some guerrilla-type attack by the North.

The North Koreans cut off military communications with the South, and said in a statement that "under this situation where war may break out at any moment," there's no reason to keep in touch. Why is this rhetoric getting so heavy?

First, North Korea is dissatisfied with the condemnation by the UN Security Council that came following its latest nuclear test in February. Secondly, there are regular military exercises that are going on right now in the southern part of the peninsula by the United States and South Korea. These are routine exercises; the North Koreans complain every year, but the decibel level of the complaints and the sorts of actions they have taken this year have gone a lot higher than in the past.

Another factor is that because of concerns in South Korea about the possibility that Pyongyang might be more aggressive, as shown by its nuclear capability, South Koreans are matching North Korea's threats as a way of sending a signal that they won't be subject to nuclear blackmail.

The United States would get directly involved if there was any direct attack, right?

Yes. The State Department essentially said that they see this as part of North Korea's "usual pattern." After North Korea's nuclear test, Washington has been trying to signal deterrence to North Korea while signaling assurance to South Korea. President Obama had a conversation with then-president Lee Myung-bak and underscored U.S. commitments to defend South Korea. There was a speech by the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, which also gave a strong statement of resolve by the United States to defend its allies and its interests. We had Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel making a missile defense announcement in response to North Korea's nuclear test. And we had the Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter passing through South Korea during exercises and in the course of a press interview mentioning that B-52s had also been part of the exercise--signaling to the North Koreans that the U.S. had a nuclear response as an option.

Has the overflight of South Korea by U.S. B-2 bombers unnerved the North Koreans?

The overflight has gotten North Korea's attention, as evidenced by the leadership's decision to hold emergency national security meetings and the announcement that they are placing their missile launch sites on alert. But North Korea's continued threats also suggest that the leadership can't concede to external threats without losing face, and Kim Jong-un's questionable domestic standing may mean that conceding is not an option. It is hard to see how North Korea will unwind its escalatory activities unless it feels it has established a position of so-called strength.

Has there been any indication that the North Koreans are actually doing anything on the ground?

They've shown pictures of exercises, and there is a set of manuevers going on that have been timed in conjunction with the U.S. exercises. But there have been no unusual movements or other activities other than announcing alert status and kind of creating an atmosphere of mobilization.

It's the third anniversary this month of the sinking of the South Korean ship, the Cheonan, off the coast by North Koreans. Has that heightened tensions at all?

There was a memorial service on March 26 in South Korea where President Park Geun-hye spoke about the importance of remembering the casualties from that incident and pledging resolve. The timing of the anniversary, along with the exercises, feeds into a cycle of tension between North and South Korea.

But let me just say one thing about North Korea's usual modus operandi as it relates to threats. Where we've seen provocations, they've been guerrilla-style provocations, not something signaled in advance. North Koreans usually want the element of surprise. They have an interest in provocation where prospects of escalation are limited, and they benefit from ambiguity of attribution. I worry more about North Korea when they are not rattling the sabre.

When they do it out of the blue?

Yes. So at this point, it's unlikely that the bite is going to match the bark.

Interesting. There's been a lot of pictures of Kim Jong-un with top military officials--is he trying to assert his dominance now?

He's been visiting a lot of military units and observed some exercises. The real issue with the new leader is that it's just not clear whether the rules of the game have changed or whether the heightened decibel level of threats might have something to do with a different approach by Kim. I'm coming to the conclusion that we're seeing basically the same pattern but with some variations--and the real concern is whether, as a young leader, he may have a higher risk acceptance than his father.

Just recently, he was with Dennis Rodman watching a basketball game, right?

That was really a strange incident, where at least we did see a side of the young leader that is probably more human and in touch with what Westerners can understand. But his choice in terms of who he engages from the West does seem unconventional.

And now we have a new president and a new prime minister in China. Have they indicated how they feel about Korea at all?

My own view is that they haven't yet made a definitive review or judgment on their policy toward North Korea yet. A lot of the decisions related to the UN Security Council resolution and how they have responded to that had more to do with simply calibrating and trying to manage the situation based on the respective pressures from the international community and their interest of stability with North Korea. But I don't think we know yet what these seven top leaders' judgment collectively is going to be about how to possibly adjust the policy toward North Korea.

At the end of the old regime, there were some suggestions that they were getting a little fed up with North Korea's nuclear testing. But on the other hand, they haven't broken their aid or trade relationship.

In 2009 we saw the same cycle, where North Korea shot a rocket and did a nuclear test and there was a Security Council resolution. And at that time, a lot of people thought that the Security Council resolution showed more cooperation from China, but then a couple of months later the top leadership essentially decided to pursue a policy of hugging North Korea closer. So that's why I don't think that what we've seen yet is the actual policy judgment from the top leadership in China.

In North and South Korea relations, one bright spot had been this industrial compound in Kaesong. That's still going on, right?

It is, but the significance of the announcement from last week was that the hotline that's been suspended was used to support some of these operations. These operations could be affected by the disuse of that hotline, and of course that would inhibit South Koreans, who are running the complex, from going North. It will probably also slow the transit of goods from South Korea to Kaesong.

What does North Korea really want from the United States and South Korea?

What Pyongyang wants from the United States is basically acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state and the end of the U.S. "hostile policy" toward North Korea. With South Korea, we're still at an early stage with the new South Korean president, Park Geun-hye. We're still in the early stages of a period in which both sides are going to be testing each other to see what their prospects are for a more stable relationship than what existed with the previous president.

The Obama administration came into office in 2009 and tried to extend its hand to North Korea, but that was met by a test of rockets and there's never been a revival of the Six Party Talks.

That's correct. The closest the Obama administration has come to being able to restart the Six Party Talks was the so-called "leap-day" agreement from February 29, 2012, where the United States and North Korea stated a set of parallel pledges to provide food aid and to resume international inspections of some of North Korea's nuclear facilities. But that was on the condition that North Korea would not proceed with nuclear or satellite launches, so that agreement broke down last spring when Pyongyang announced that it was going to do a satellite test.

And there hasn't been any agreement between the two governments since then?

That bilateral agreement was designed to affirm that North Korea would talk about denuclearization at the Six Party talks--so it was really the pathway to get back to Six Party Talks. The failure of that agreement seems to foreclose any prospect for renewal of the Six Party framework for the time being.

What are the chances of hostilities between North and South in the near future?

The primary danger is related to the potential for miscalculation between the two sides. And in this kind of atmosphere of tensions, that miscalculation could have deadly consequences. A second concern is the possibility--although we don't see evidence of it--that instability inside North Korea could lead to some kind of lashing out by the North, and that would obviously result in hostilities.

So at the moment there's no sign of anything happening, but there's always that risk.

Tensions are high, and the real question is whether or not North Korea's current fever is going to pass. And we see South Korea beginning to extend some olive branches; they announced they were going to resume humanitarian aid separate from denuclearization talks. So there are some potential ways that the situation could begin to calm, but North Korea has to work itself out of this frenzy before the situation settles down.

---------------------------------

So hopefully the first paragraph or the FP article will not end up like we have done in the past.

Ron:
Your emotional state is a mirror image of Un's. When both sides in a controversy allow themselves to be emotionally controlled by the other side, you get wars that could have been avoided. Cooler heads have a better chance of seeing the best path clearly.

The option of moving our assets into position on the down low, if I may purloin another's terminology, is not really an option. It has to be done.

The economies of the US and China are now welded at the hip so we have a good chance of avoiding conflict there. China may have to deal with a flood of immigrants crossing their border with Korea. And they show every sign of closer diplomatic exchanges with the US.

On the positive side this liability now faced by China, a liability posed by a nation apparently having nuclear capability, may make this a good time for the US, China, and Russia to put even more effort in the work to limit nuclear proliferation.

The will to win what, exactly? To annihilate twice as many people as we have already? To spend twice as much money? To eliminate the Taliban, which will do nothing to stop Islamic fundamentalism as a whole?

Yeah, maybe the new Chinese government needs to buckle down and work on their immigration policy. There's probably some gainful employment to be had with that burgeoning Chinese middle class. (please forgive me...I'm being tongue-in-cheek)

This is all more for the new Chinese leader's benefit than ours. More of a "I don't get no respect" sort of deal and reminding to the new Chinese government what a complete pain in the ass they can be when ignored.

Why would Kim pull the trigger? He has all the guns he needs to commit personal and national suicide. But for what purpose? He knows the only way he survives is to declare victory before anything happens. There will be no preemptive strike on NK. The only way he ‘wins’ is if he does nothing and tells his poor suffering populace that the might and righteousness of Mt. Paektu has turned NK into the world’s dominant superpower.

They could have icbm capabilities, they put a satellite into orbit. If they put a nuclear weapon in orbit, they could de-orbit it anytime and strike anywhere in the world regardless of distance. I think this is why they made several announcements about "smaller, lighter" nukes. But whether they really have small nukes is not known. There are probably other issues too.

The North Koreans will never give up their nuclear weapons. The question is whether they ever believe they're in a "use em or lose em" situation. If they thought war was inevitable then the obvious strategy is to hit the US bases in Japan and Guam with nukes, to neutralize US air bases. Save the other nukes for any aircraft carriers that come into range. The US always counts on air superiority and follows the same script every time, hit the command and control centers, etc.

They wont want to be the aggressor since they want the Chinese to have to honor their treaty. I havent seen the treaty but if NK starts a war Im not sure China would be obligated to defend them. The treaty is probably secret or at least has secret parts to it. Most defense treaties have classified sections that arent even mentioned in the main treaty.

The US has nothing at all to gain from pushing them any more right now, unless as someone suggested, we want to bite the bullet now, have a nuclear exchange, and kill millions of people. And the justification for that would be ... to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

One almost certain outcome of all this is that Japan will rearm. The problems in the Senkoku Islands had many leaning in that direction and this will, in time, tip it that way.

Notice that the North Koreans have threatened South Korea, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam but have never mentioned Okinawa in Japan. This is odd from a military standpoint as we have more war capabilities here than any of the other places mentioned.

I believe this shows that the North Koreans really don't want to take on the big boys and they don't want to make an enemy of Japan given that country's ruthless conquest and exploitation of Korea for more than 50 years earlier in the 20th century.

Why is this an American responsibility to clean up or police? Who Says? Why not let the Chinese deal with it? What if we stayed out of it entirely, withdrew the US troops and let them do whatever they needed to do - without us.

This guy's on the exact same wavelength as me. The US has to chill out a little. Now's not the time to try to take away the NK's nukes. It's a mistake to analyze it in terms of Kim-un's personality, age or whatever. It's the same policy their govt has had all along.

The way the North Koreans look at it, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear bomb, and lost his head. The lesson of Saddam Hussein’s end is another cautionary tale for the North Koreans. If Saddam had held onto his weapons of mass destruction–and lots of them–the Obama Administration would have had second thoughts about invading his country.

Ok! It has been known for quite a while South Koreans solders are placed in the North as North Korean Soldiers as the same the Northern Soldiers are placed in the South as South Koreans soldiers. Spooks. But they do not talk together.

But latest rumour is China in the last few weeks placed spooks in the North since there are America spooks from the US. But the difference is: these Chinese spooks are talking with the US spooks and setting up contingence plans if North Korea starts something and will fail with China/US intervention by other means than shooting and it will be quick.

Now this might be a first plus it solves everyone’s problems no clean-up of nuclear waste, solves refugee problem, health issues and brings stability to the region with China doing the work.

Werner, I am American, and I am stupid. I am the village idiot, and proud of it. An idiot savant.

I just happen to live abroad.

Werner says:

Chuck Norris could just go to North Korea by himself in his underwear and little Kim would sh!t a brick and stop everything ......

Isn't that sort of the like the line in On Deadly Ground, where your man says about Steven Seagal:

"You could drop this guy off at the Arctic Circle wearing a pair of bikini underwear, without his toothbrush, and tomorrow afternoon he's going to show up at your pool side with a million dollar smile and fist full of pesos."

Forget about North Korea v South Korea. I'd like to see the 'winner' of a Seagal v Norris stand off.

Locker says:

We should send in a "Sniper" and toast that little rat bastard...

No argument here, but why did we not do that with Saddam Hussein and save a lot of Iraqi, American and Allied lives? And the big hit to the American economy, and others?

BASE, Coz and others are right, it is about feeding the beast of the military-industrial complex that generals Dwight D Eisenhower and Smedley Butler warned us about.

War funnels the sweat and equity of common people into the hands of those running the military industrial complex. The fed generates money. Labor generates money. This is a siphon.

Crazy thing is anyone proffering this POV is earmarked a quack, an unralistic thinker, misinformed, and at all junctures their credibility is questioned. But the fact remains that if governments stood NO CHANCE of profiting from war, that in fact it would cost the Halliburton's of the world a fortune, meaning it no longer was a siphon but a bottomless money pit, what war do you think we'd be fighting? How avidly would we back South Korea if we got nothing in return? Nothing. As in zero. If in fact it COST up hundreds of millions in the munitions we lobbed at the North? And it would.

The whole thing is utter bullsh#t, from most every angle, and those insisting it is not are the most deluded. It is so distorted that the catchphrase in all such conflicts is that "nothing is absolutely true or absolutely false in war."

Basically N Korea is very predictable. Being outrageous and slightly dangerous is what they do, their MO if you will. You can almost set your clock by it.

Here is what I said a week ago

they are limited to whatever creative annoyances they can come up with that won't quite get themselves killed by us or SK. Things like sinking ships.. small barrages on mostly unihabited lands. Nuke tests..or whatever other small thing they can come up with perhaps unanticipated.

I would expect something fairly soon based on past MO.

Looks like this time it's another missile launch (nothing new there). Expected in a few days. Probably lob it off the coast of Japan would be my guess. At worst they might try to hit some uninhabited or lightly inhabited island with a conventional or dummy warhead. Hoping no one over-reacts. Should make for some great target practice for our missile defense systems. I wonder if they will work.

I also would not be surprised if the missile explodes or fails on launch. We may have more than a few feasible strategies for sabotage.

Ron, get a paper bag and breathe into it. You're getting yourself excited.
Nobody starts a war they know they can't win. They're like cats in heat
howling in the night. They know it has gotten them what they want in the
past so they keep doing it.

You malign all barking dogs with that analogy. Good dogs bark for a reason!
Yes, it is unlikely they will give up their nukes for all the rice in China.
The bosses have plenty to eat so they will continue with what has become
part of their national identity. Eventually I foresee them growing up a
little after they see that all the diplomacy we throw at them is all they're
going to get out of us any more. We really need to stop the food aid.

"Oh, and by the way, Mr Dung Poo, you have heard of these undersea ships we
have which we call Tridents?"

And I would really like to know who funded Mr Rodman's little Hanoi Jane escapade.
I suspect the IRS would also like to know.

Just another classic example of America's stupidity. We should have during the Korean War blasted these dog eaters into oblivion. Now they are back making waves in the pool. Just wait till the Taliban regroups. Same sh#t different piles. Same stupid politically correct f*#king American bullsh#t.

Their mode of speech is very similar to that presented by the Japanese during and prior to WWII. Probably good to remember how that war started in the Pacific. In that case Yamamoto told them to start the war only if they were certain it would be won in a matter of weeks. For if it took longer, they would surely lose.

As to finishing the Korean war of the fifties once and for all, MacArthur forcefully maintained that position. Unfortunately it would have required waging something close to genocide against China. In the present situation we now have the benefit of being China's most important trading partner. I have previously wondered if this whole affair might increase all nations' interest in treaties to reduce nuclear armaments. The Korean situation only adds to other recent data indicating we cannot assume people and nations always act rationally.

edit: The Daily Beast is a fairly reputable source which certainly does not lean towards the right.

edit #2: What are the chances, in that video, that anyone is even hitting the targets at that range with an iron sight AK47? Not exactly an accurate rifle at range. I get it. Put the targets far enough away and save a lot of money on printing.

Japan and the US hearing from a well-respected unnamed resource that has prior experience with such matters that it is armed with a nuclear device: Fires and destroys rocket.

Rocket as well as the capsule crash into Sea of Japan [East Sea] 291 Kilometers [181 miles] off the west coast of Japan. The capsule was found floating on the surface of the ocean 160 Kilometers [100 miles] near the city of Itoigawa.

US recovers capsule and finds no sign of a nuclear device and find that the Koreans were trying to launch a monkey into space for future space exploration research.

North Korea is inflamed on firing on their unarmed missile and that the monkey that was found dead from the countermeasures placed by the US and Japan was Kim’s favorite monkey that he had as a child years before he went overseas to study is now in mourning.

North Korea and Kim now says that the US, Japan and the rest of the world must pay restitution for its unauthorized action of aggression against a non-hostel nation and wants AID to their nation for the miscalculation of the actions of the nations involved in the firing and destruction of the rockets and Kim’s favorite monkey.

They are asking for an unknown amount of money that could go way into billions or close to over a trillion dollars.

North Korea says the monies will used for humanitarian aid for feeding its starving people, rebuilding schools so that every student will have access to the highest degrees of education, infrastructures improvements and other critical programs that kept their country from prospering due to the sanctions imposed by these countries over the years: especially the US and other UN/NATO countries.

They also said none of the funds would go the military, its cronies and especially ending up in the hands of the well-respected Son of a Kim but all checks, funds, food, building materials, gold bullion, platinum and other rare and expensive minerals with additional undisclosed aid, must be directly delivered to Kim with his name on all goods and especially funds so it can go to the correct jurisdiction for distribution.

Fox news reports that the unknown source of this deadly misfortune/calculation is not Dick Cheney as word gets out Cheney was vacationing in the area at the time of the incident. When asked about why there were dozens of large cargo ships under Panamanian registration with different names and found out that the parent company is Haliburton and its subsidiaries, Cheney said it was just a coincidence and none of cargo was intended for rebuilding of North Korea but could be at a minutes notice.

When asked why one ship had over a million of basketballs made in Texas with unregistered Mexican workers as well as thousands of hoops and why the pricing on these goods were over inflated by 300% he let his press secretary take over the questioning.

Former President Bush which has a 30% stock interest with Cheney venture who as recently seen with his daughter would not respond nor had no clue what is going on and went back in hiding still looking for things that he accomplished during his two terms that could be used for the Library that the Republicans plan to build in his name.

*By the way the screaming is normal, it is the tones that they use and some are high, quite high. For them, a high pitch may convey strength, sincerity or warmth-- values that people cherish. In comparison, a soft voice may imply weaknesses or indecisiveness.